Understanding Curved Spacetime

Intern. J. Comput.-Support. Collab. Learn

Silseth

2019

Self Cite

This study contributes to our understanding of meaning making in CSCL environments by examining a specific aspect of collaborative problem solving in which students improvise, introduce, and make meaning with representations in disciplinary domains. These situations include the embodied and imaginative processes of discovering new representational possibilities and artifact meanings. Much of the research on student-generated representations examines situations in which students are asked by a teacher or researcher explicitly to produce representations. However, we need more knowledge about how students within CSCL settings introduce representations from outside of the designed environment or intended task in order to solve a problem. To unpack the processes of collaborative improvisation and meaning making, we take a sociocultural stance towards imagining. This stance involves considering the socially and materially situated ways that participants express new possibilities and alternative situations that extend beyond the present reality. Focusing on a specific task based on maps as disciplinary representations, we analyze video data of upper secondary physics students working in small groups in a co-located CSCL environment. To characterize shifts across boundaries of several modalities including the verbal and gestural, digital and physical, and two-dimensional and three-dimensional, we identify emergent representations as imaginative productions. The findings extend current research on collaborative meaning making by bringing attention to the processes through which improvised representations emerge. This knowledge is key to facilitating the discovery of representational possibilities in CSCL environments.

Section: Project Background and Taskmentioning

confidence: 99%

Imagining with improvised representations in CSCL environments

Steier

Intern. J. Comput.-Support. Collab. Learn

Silseth

2019

Self Cite

“…For example, the rubber sheet analogy compares the fabric of spacetime to a malleable rubber sheet. Kersting and Steier [17] recommend addressing strengths and weaknesses of this rubber sheet analogy explicitly when teaching general relativity. In a similar vein, Huwe and Field [25] introduce the wine glass model to demonstrate gravitational lensing while also encouraging learners to think…”

Section: Design Of Instructional Resources: How Do We Teach About Dark Matter?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Bend it like dark matter!

Woithe

2021

Phys. Educ.

Self Cite

Dark matter is one of the most intriguing scientific mysteries of our time and offers exciting instructional opportunities for physics education in high schools. The topic is likely to engage and motivate students in the classroom and allows addressing open questions of the Standard Model of particle physics. Although the empirical evidence of dark matter links nicely to many standard topics of physics curricula, teachers may find it challenging to introduce the topic in their classrooms. In this article, we present a fun new approach to teach about dark matter using jelly lenses as an instructional analogy of gravitational lenses. We provide a brief overview of the history of dark matter to contextualise our presentation and discuss the instructional potential as well as limitations of the jelly lens analogy.

“…This conversation is of particular interest because the students show deep engagement with gravity and spacetime, but they struggle to articulate different views of the phenomenon based on classical and modern physics. Their conversation centers partly on a representation of curved spacetime employed in the module, the so-called rubber sheet analogy (Kersting & Steier, 2018). The rubber sheet analogy compares curved spacetime to a rubber sheet: A heavy object is placed on the stretched sheet and creates a well.…”

Section: Episode: An Extended Conversation About Gravity and Spacetimementioning

confidence: 99%

“…In general relativity, one of the most prevailing analogies of curved spacetime is the so called rubber sheet analogy that compares the fabric of spacetime to a rubber sheet bending under the influence of objects being placed on it (see Figure 1). While this analogy is heavily used in popular science literature and textbooks, many physicists and science educators criticize the analogy for being misleading, because it conveys a problematic understanding of gravity and curvature (diSessa, 1981;Gould, 2016;Kersting & Steier, 2018). In the episode we present in this study, the rubber sheet analogy serves to prompt students' shared exploration of different conceptual models of gravity to make present what is not present, to visualize the invisible, in short to imagine gravity as curvature of four-dimensional spacetime.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Metaimagining and Embodied Conceptions of Spacetime

Steier

Cognition and Instruction

2019

Self Cite

Though we live in a four-dimensional universe, our minds and bodies are not particularly good at perceiving and depicting four dimensions. This study contributes to our understanding of collaboration with abstract concepts by examining particular activities where bodily and experiential understandings may conflict with the conceptual domain. Specifically, upper secondary physics classrooms studying Einstein's general theory of relativity are taken as a setting to identify the representational practices and conceptual challenges that arise when learners attempt to make meaning with, and express conflicting notions of, space and time. To unpack these challenges, we draw on the concept of imagination and on theoretical perspectives that treat imagining as a social activity. We also present the concept of metaimagining to characterize layered processes in which learners attend to and manage shifts between their own imaginative activities. This concept is illustrated through a detailed analysis of an extended conversation between two upper secondary physics students working with general relativity and spacetime. The students perform a diverse set of imaginative activities that are strongly tied to communicative, cognitive, and bodily action. We also show how the unique domain of general relativity presents particular challenges to student meaning making of abstract concepts which in turn prompt metaimagining. Based on our analysis, we offer recommendations to improve instructional practices in general relativity and argue for the consideration of imagining as a transdisciplinary competency in math and science education.